I'm so excited to get to join them this month as the November Guest Designer. In fact, just as I was finishing up this very card, they asked me to come onto the team! Wow! Of course I accepted, and now I kinda feel like I made this card for myself! Thanks everyone, it's like a party everyday!

[This post was supposed to go up on Sunday, but Blogger ate my homework. And, much like the child whose puppy ate her homework two days before it was actually due, I had ample time to rewrite it but I was visiting the in-laws and, well, playing dolls with our 4-year-old niece trumped my remembering my blogging duties! Oh well, better late than never:]

The Pile It On challenge this week is sponsored by Whoopsi Daisy Designs, and in the spirit of their sweet & girly digi stamps, the theme is Sugar & Spice (Girly, baking, color, etc.). As always, the PIO Design Team made awesome projects, so you'll have plenty of inspiration! Hope you'll join us.

This is a Side Spring card, and I adore that it really only takes one sheet of paper. I first saw this type of card at Grannyscards, and it was easy to follow the Splitcoast Stampers tutorial that she linked to.

Here it is "open":

And the back message section:

Inspiration:
[I missed the deadlines on the last 2 challenges this card was inspired by!]

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

It's certainly been wintry here; we have one last tree changing & dropping leaves, so I'm enjoying the burst of yellow before the view empties into spidery branches against the flat sky. Although it does open up to the most beautiful nightly view of Orion.

I've lived in places that don't have much of a winter, and even though I'm cold and slightly blue the whole way through, I rather enjoy the winters in Maryland. There's something so starkly beautiful about those months, and especially at this time of year when people put candles & lights in their windows. Festivals of Light are are one of those human phenomena, a universal need to shine a little light through the darkness.

So fun! I used a basketball-embossed paper I bought some time ago for a project, and ran the yellow pieces through my embossing machine more adding the colored pieces. The "be merry" sentiment is a polymer stamp (Studio G I think?); isn't it just right with that DTD image?!

I had so much fun making my postcard for the Thanksgiving Postcard Challenge / Swap at City Crafter, and was truly inspired by all the entries. We have until Nov. 22 to send out our postcard & some Thanksgiving goodies to our swap partner, and I just sent mine out yesterday. However, my swap partner, Linda from My Happy Place, was really on the ball and I received my goodies from her on Friday! Whoop! Thank you so much Linda, it brightened my whole weekend.

Before we get to the goodies, here's the way this beautiful package arrived at my doorstep:

Wowza! It's decorated on the front too. Just think of all the smiles this gave along the way!

And here's what was inside:

Linda's postcard is so lovely and cheerful...The stitching is so exact and perfect, I can't believe it. You can read more about the postcard in her original post.

And now for the goodies:

I cannot wait to use all of this! That rose ribbon is so fantastic that I might just hang it up in the house to admire!

Many thanks to Linda and the whole team at City Crafter. Looking forward to more challenges and swaps!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

This week's Dude Time Doodles challenge is an inspiration challenge: Make a card inspired by the image on the right. You can interpret it any way you'd like: Thanksgiving, color theme, leaves, gratitude, turkeys, whatever! Here's the official scoop:

1. Use the photo / color inspiration and the Dude and Dudette creations to get your mojo moving.

2. You are not required to use BDD images. Although it would make us really really happy and giggle a lot if you did!

3. You can use humor, innuendo, be a little naughty, sarcastic. As long as your project is masculine.

Graphicat Designsis a Brand New website full of some of your favorite things. Not only do we carry our own unique blend of sarcasm based sentiments and fun images, but we are the Canadian retailer for some fabulous other stamp companies such as Tickled Pink, Simply Betty and Whimsy Stamps. Graphicat Stamps come in digi format, High Quality Clear Photopolymer and Unmounted Red rubber for all your stamping pleasures! Graphicat also offers many other great paper crafting items from custom, hand made embellishments to BoBunny paper pads. *And* we offer FREE SHIPPING! So pop on over and check us out, sign up for our newsletter and look around.

Graphicat Designs is Proud to sponsor Dude Time Doodles, a fellow stamp company with images that match our sarcastic ways at Graphicat!

The winner will receive a Sushi Stamp Set from Graphicat Designs, pictured here:

Isn't that such an awesome prize?! Hop over to Dude Time Doodles and check out the gorgeous cards by the Design Team; then take that inspiration and join the challenge!

I decided to make a Thanksgiving card with Bountiful Blessings. I knew I wanted to layer the image, but couldn't decide on the card design. So I asked my Creative Consultant (my fab husband) for some direction, and he suggested "dimension & texture". So I made a simple framed card, using a template I made for a FlowerSoft/Dimensional card back in August.

I separated the image into 4 layers, with texture on each. There's FlowerSoft on the feather, Glossy Accents on the eyes, apple, and ham (I love that I can honestly say that I glazed the ham!), glitter glue on the stein & buckle, flocking on the pumpkin & squash, and I machine-embossed the football. Each layer is popped up with foam pop-dots.

I only have two Thanksgiving sentiment stamps: one in English and one in Spanish. I chose the latter, from from Dilo En Español Stamps, and stamped it with StazOn onto a pretty, preprinted acetate sheet Mom sent me. I backed the acetate with vellum, and popped the whole thing with foam tape.

The inside was built with the scraps from cutting the front frames, and I enlarged some of the main image for embellishments.

Even though this is a GDT card, I'm entering into the Texture Challenge at Lily Pad Cards. Be sure to check out all the wonderful DT cards for this challenge at Dude Time Doodles, and I can't wait to see what you create!

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

It's time for another Freebie Challenge at Dude Time Doodles, and I'm super excited to get to play along with the Design Team again as a guest designer! Hope you'll join us; and if you win, you could become the Guest Designer for December! This is a super-fun team, and the images are so great to work with.

This month's freebie is Duck Snowball Warrior. Doesn't he look like he just hit by a snowball & is saying, "Oh yeah?!," about to fire off in snowy retaliation! My husband & I always enjoy a good snowball fight, but it can get pretty serious!

I decided to stick with a snowy color scheme, so I added detail to the digi with gel pens. I generated the sentiment with Harrington, and traced it with a glitter pen as well. The snowman is printed on a shiny white paper and paper-pieced onto the white background. I added "snow" with FlowerSoft & flocking. I made the frame in SCAL & cut it on my Cricut, so that I had a frame with little circles I could make into snowballs! I filled each indent with Glossy Accents and covered it with Polar White FlowerSoft. I cut a backing frame mat from scrap cardboard, and edged it with a gold pen. After putting it all together, I added some glittery Stickles along the inside frame, and on the edges of the tulle.

For the inside, I cut some white circles to make a snowball-pyramid. I edged them with a Smirk glitter pen. I glued a shiny white mat onto the flat white card base, and embossed it together with a Polka Dots (I did the same for the front frame).

There are so many possibilities with this digi, so be sure to enter the challenge and make yourself a fun Winter card!

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Despite all one's wisdom & best intentions, sometimes Life Happens. My friend's marriage ended suddenly three years ago, and she's really risen to the challenge and is doing great. The breakup took about a year, but since then they've just been going through the legal hoops (expensive hoops!) to end the legal part of the union. Well, I was talking to her yesterday & she said that next week it will be final. Whoo-hoo! She said that if she had the time (she's a mom, who has the time?!) she might throw a party or something, so I thought I'd make her a card. I know she'll get a huge kick out of it. Transition is tough, and people who get through it even stronger certainly deserve a card!

Monday, November 7, 2011

I decided to try something different this week, and signed up for the Postcard Swap at City Crafter. Everyone's postcards are so gorgeous! I had tons of fun making mine, which I'm also entering into their Postcard challenge.

I won this funky rubber stamp at the Spotlight Challenge, and I've been itching to use it! I liked the idea of a movie-flyer postcard from Classic Hollywood. I stamped it with StazOn & colored it with watercolor pencils. I crazy-stitched it on my sewing machine (sew much fun!), and sprayed both sides with a Satin Finish coating. I added a little lace that I sprayed with orange glimmer mist.

The back:

I made the back in PhotoShop, using mostly a new-to-me form of digi stamps, "PhotoShop Brushes." These are collections of images that you load into your PhotoShop brush presets. I learned about these through a link at Graphics Fairy to Pretty Procrastination. You have to check out that post, it has lots of good info, links, and a promise of many more files! See my supply list below for links to the image sets I used here.

I "aged" the postcard with Antique Linen distress ink. I added some "noise" in PhotoShop to the lines, text & Postcard sentiment to give more of an aged look too. The "Air Mail" stamp was colorized in PhotoShop, but I added the color to the sentiment with a watercolor pencil.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Happy Saturday everyone. With only 3 more days to enter the Dude Time Doodles November Holidays Challenge, I thought I'd give you a little extra inspiration! Be sure to hop on over and check out the beautiful DT projects for this challenge, if you haven't already.

The first card I made inspired by this challenge was a Thanksgiving card, so I wanted to make a card for another, lesser-known November Holiday, "Stay at Home because You are Well Day"! I used the Hammock Harold set from Dude Time Doodles, a digi from Create with TLC, and some funky papers from 7 Gypsies to make this Shadow Box Card:

And the back:

Here's a view from the top:

I'm working on wedding invitations (130! Holy Crap!) for my husband's cousin, so I won't be doing much blogging for the rest of November. But check in every Wednesday for a new Dude Time Doodles Challenge! I'm having such a great time being a guest designer with them.

I chose Thanksgiving, so that I could use Ted Tightend & Paul Pilgrim from Dude Time Doodles. I made a "Pigskin Time" sentiment to play on the traditional ham & football so many of us enjoy on that day!

I made a horizontal Notch Swing Card (my vertical notch swing card & SVG templates available here), so that images can take turns being in front! I paper-pieced them, and used Copics to add details. I added some football-like hand-stitching. It's really very simple, and looks so good! The patterned papers are embossed Black Magic Core'dinations; one is a light yellow + black, and the other is light brown + black. The interior paper is a DP I had in my stash...those swirls are kinda pig-tail-y, right?!